Hmmm, well this could be the start of something big. Companies could pick who to own by financing their educations, who to move to the front lines, and who is best suited as an organ donor. Companies could also aid only those who agree with their agendas. Combined with some genetic engineering, there's great opportunity for corporate optimizations here... or a script for a sci-fi movie/series??

(I release any interest I have in this idea for free use by any filmmaker not connected with Comcast)

I enjoyed the book -- audiobook actually, although the second book in the series is read by a different reader which was a totally annoying and ridiculous decision by the publisher -- you spend the first quarter just relearning the characters' voices.

Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place? Computer software to track an individuals 'performance' (Ie; a 'quantitative thing') is yet another step in the ass-backwardness of the modern educational system.

Why do we always forget that while test scores are important, they are FAR from the deterministic quality on which to judge an individuals intelligence or desire to learn?

We have not created successful AI; The human mind stuck inside a quality educator, no matter the level, cannot be boiled down to algorithms and pure statical data-sets.

We did already have this. It was called report cards, and when I was in K-12 school, it got sent home on paper with me once every six weeks so my parents could look at it and see how I was doing and if necessary ground me for not paying attention in school.

We did already have this. It was called report cards, and when I was in K-12 school, it got sent home on paper with me once every six weeks so my parents could look at it and see how I was doing and if necessary ground me for not paying attention in school.

With grade inflation its no longer meaningful. Also its a pretty good form of "stealth ageism". For example I'm old enough (get off my F-ing lawn) that I worked extremely hard to get a B+ in quantitative chemical analysis, lets just say it was long enough ago that we had an admittedly old even in that era apple II for a lab computer for potentiometric electrochemical analysis. Back in ye olden days, a B+ was a pretty strong effort and looks good on my transcript and believe it or not probably curved me up to around the top quartile of the class, I always was a superior chemist even in one of my weaker areas. Compared to a young whipper snapper where as long as you pay the registration office and show up, you're guaranteed an easy "A", that B+ makes me look like the class moron. And that is "stealth ageism" because my numbers make me appear dumber than your average young 4.0 student, but I actually did what would in modern terms be relatively high "A" level work not merely a B+. To figure out I'm a moron you should have to read/., not compare a decades old grades transcript with a modern hyper-inflated grade transcript.

I've seen this effect with my kids. I used to get the full spectrum of D in gym up to A+ in science, but they only get wishy washy word grades now in grade school, like a checkmark for one of these three "Have not begun this topic" "making progress on this topic" "mastered this topic". I'm told there was a slightly earlier era a decade ago where they exclusively gave out A grade, it was just curved to A- for the morons, plain A for the masses, and A+ for the elite.

Marks will not be awarded for raw intelligence in math, chem and the hard sciences. It will turn into a sheeple score. How well you fit in as a corporate cog. Shut up, don't rock the boat, kiss the whip that beats you. How compliant you are. How much abuse and corruption you can endure, without blowing the whistle. How well can you turn your head away from the deaths at Foxconn. How well can you spin death, corruption, pollution in the media.

All you shit disturbers here on slashdot would have been marked and seperated out long before you every reached the second grade.

Jobs and Wozniak would never be hired by the Modern Apple HR department.

The kids that instintively say Hell No to the brutal psyops that marks industrial schooling, the Einstiens, the gentle geniuses, the shy creative types, everyone who was marked, scarred and terrorize by the years of indoctrination called education.

Public school is an awful place. To do well in it, 'WELL' being defined by Murdoch and Gates, that to me is some kind of new and awfull hell. Evil of a brand new kind. Evil worthy of a new word.

To everyone out there still in school, you have my deepest sympathy and greatest support. I cannot even imagine how awful and soul destroying it is now.

Public school has already been that way for decades. There is no monitoring of how the teachers arrive at a students grade. It's heavily dependent on how much they like the student or how well the student conforms to their ideas of what should be rewarded. They don't even return graded work any longer since it might be used by next years class to "cheat".

Actually tests are pretty much uniform measures of knowledge gained. Of course it will significantly bias grades to those who are good at tests. I was one of those study the night before after bludging through the whole term to pass to get a higher grade start studying two nights before the exam. Write down answers for example questions and done. Essay and projects are just so annoying, especially when their original intent was as a learning tool rather than a grading tool. I gather from Gates funding pref

To be fair the other people who like them, are the ones that stress out at exams and fail due to mind block (fear of failure leads to failure) and of course the communicators, those that like to have meetings, do presentations and often do more than their fair share of work.

There are a few slack and idlers but they are of course the narcissists and psychopaths, these genetically deficient individuals have to go to school as well, otherwise how would school bullies graduate to be law enforcement (versus p

Nice non-sequitur, but the reason people hesitate at red lights even when no cars are around is if you do a lot of walking, you want to *subconsciously* handle as much of the walking as possible. If I start teaching myself that traffic rules are optional, I might treat them as optional *even when I'm not paying attention*.

Well, a lot of systems force a normal distribution on everything where the average will get C on an A-F scale, but it's not without side effects. I went to a rather prestigious study, like only the top 5-10% students would be qualified to get in. For classes that we shared with other studies like math classes we'd pretty much all get As and Bs, and the trend mostly stayed in other classes too because it was silly to say this was a D or E grade project even if you were slightly worse than all the other reall

This is the common sentiment among older generations, yet younger generations regularly score higher on tests that previous generations have taken; kids today have to learn alot more than you did, so you'll have to forgive your kid for not knowing how to use a slide-rule since he's busy learning calculus instead. If you think kids today are "lazy" or have it too easy because they aren't doing the lab exercises you're talking about, that's because they're too busy learning about the various discoveries in ch

This is the common sentiment among older generations, yet younger generations regularly score higher on tests that previous generations have taken

[Citation needed]

kids today have to learn alot more than you did

Like that "alot" isn't a word?

they aren't doing the lab exercises you're talking about, that's because they're too busy learning about the various discoveries in chemistry and biology since your days in school to waste a whole day on a pointless lab demonstration.

You mean watching videos of a cartoon character doing it rather than learning how to do it themselves?

Why would you move to a state with a higher crime rate? Another homeschool fail?

There are so many things wrong with your brief post, it's hard to know where to start. First, in terms of violent crime commission rate over population, Washington state is in fact worse than Wyoming, per http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html [census.gov] (maybe that's changed over the last few decades, maybe it hasn't). Second, if you had thought things through a little more deeply before posting, you would realize that even if Wyoming had a higher crime rate than Washington, GP's family could have improved

Well, in all fairness, how else are they supposed to grade you in gym? Is everyone who isn't naturally gifted in sports supposed to get a D or F? I always thought that work and effort were what gym was supposed to be all about. Obviously, someone who is naturally athletic isn't going to be judged on the same scale as someone who can barely handle a basketball. Otherwise you would likely be giving the same grade to someone who sat around and did nothing and someone who really busted his ass trying to get bet

Why not the same for math then? Some people are naturally gifted at math, just as others may be gifted at basketball. Maybe none of these people are naturally gifted at all, but their parents chose to do a lot of sports with them from a very young age, so they seem naturally gifted. Maybe the kids who is good at math had his parents asking him math questions every day. There shouldn't be a concept of A for effort. Because I know a lot of people who tried really hard in school, but still couldn't grasp t

I see you used the plural form of "parents". This was once the norm, but that was destroyed by big media (who shaped expectations and opinions), big government (who decided that welfare programs should reward irresponsible breeding), and the religious establishment (who decided that they really just want the collection plate filled).

Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?

Years before my son reached Middle School, I looked high and low for these people; turns out the only place I was able to find them in Houston was in a private school, being paid what they should be paid.

While there are a few great teachers scattered randomly throughout HISD, many find themselves, for the most part, saddled with a ridiculous bureaucracy and large class sizes- there's much more to it than finding great teachers. The result is, I spend almost more than I can afford to send my son to a privat

Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?

I know one of those - a special ed teacher. She truly loves her kids and and does whatever she can to help them; but she is caught in system that says she *must* teach the same curriculum as for regular ed kids. Never mind that her kids, after a week of teaching them the color red, forget what it is as soon as they learn blue; she must teach a specified curriculum. The kids do not have to learn it, she must however prove she exposed them to each part of it. So, instead of being taught skills they can use in life they sit through lessons that they'll never remember. She tries hard to make them interesting and appropriate, but it is frustrating. I would not be surprised when she qualifies for retirement she decides to quit and do something else; not because she doesn't like teaching or isn't good at it but the system seems to be designed to make it a miserable experience. Add in pay cuts despite signing a contract at the start of the year and parents who expect 24 by 7 availability (she gets emails on Christmas and New Years Day) and it's no wonder teachers leave the profession or simply give up and coast to retirement.

> Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?

No, it's just you. The elite think that spending $5-6k per student per year is good enough for the masses. They however spend over $20k per year to educate their children at private schools with low, low student class sizes and lot of extras. The average good teacher makes it about 5-years before burnout. Anecdotally, I know a really good teacher that just left at the 5-year

Yes, the ass-backwardness of the modern educational system... Tracking performance through metrics... like grades. Education is not art. It's passing down to the next generation what is already known. Since there is a way to measure it, it should be measured. Measurements don't exist because they are fun or cool or turn somebody on. They exist because they are informative.

Not that all are bad; I've known some very good teachers, and we lobbied with the Principal to get our children into their classrooms. But they were the exception.

Honestly, and this is just a general assumption (although, I'm sure there is plenty of truth in it):

They are exceptions because the field pays so LITTLE and seems to be quite hard. (Not the teaching, mind you, but the 'beat down' one gets from Government, Parents, School boards, etc).

Imagine $76 million dollars to fund MORE / 'Better' teachers? Willing to bet it does more to help the overall economy & education (current AND future, in the same price tag) than buying some silly software that's going to s

Imagine $76 million dollars to fund MORE / 'Better' teachers? Willing to bet it does more to help the overall economy & education (current AND future, in the same price tag) than buying some silly software that's going to show us that we don't truly care anymore.

I don't think it would have much effect.

Half your budget goes to overhead and management right off the top. Darn near a 1:2 administrator / teacher ratio where I live, and administrators get paid more for doing basically nothing productive, and physical plant overhead is quite expensive (imagine what it would cost to rent an office building the size of a school per year). Then lets assume the average teacher pulls down $50K. Yes I'm well aware that their salary model is different than, say, private sector IT, so a newbie teacher starts out at $20K and gets a 5K raise every year for the rest of their career, whereas a IT dude gets $50K the first year and then gets a pay raise a little smaller than inflation for the rest of his career. Back to topic. It does nothing to hire one teacher for one year if they just get downsized next year, so lets pay them for 20 years to have a real, generational effect.

Thats 76M / 2 (half to overhead) / 50 (thousand bucks per teacher per year) / 20 years = no calculator necessary about 38 teachers for twenty years. So across a dozen states you just hired about one (big) elementary school, or perhaps an average sized middle school. Eh.

"The fact that we have more race, ethnicity and economic heterogeneity, and we have this huge problem of poverty, should not mean we don't want qualified teachers - the strategies become even more important," Dr. Darling-Hammond said. "Thirty years ago, Finland's education system was a mess. It was quite mediocre, very inequitable. It had a lot of features our system has: very top-down testing, extensive tracking, highly variable teachers, and they managed to reboot the whole system."

Singapore and South Korea do about as well as Finland but with a different approach - the students do a lot more work, have more pressure and I think they have a higher student to teacher ratio (more expensive directly for the State). FWIW I think I'd prefer to be a Finnish student than a Singaporean student. The former apparently enjoy the process of being educated more.

This is a big part of the problem. I was an English teacher and routinely had average class sizes in the low 30s. That's teaching 3 periods a day. Sometimes I had as many as 36 in a class. Imagine trying to assign, edit, return, and regrade a 3-5 page writing assignment. It was nearly impossible when you throw in all the worthless No Child Left Behind paperwork.

What really worries me is Murdoch's general push into the field of education. The man has already succeeded in indoctrinating an entire generation of adult Republicans into his own twisted version -- a version that has neither served conservatism nor America well. Is he going to start with the children now?

That's interesting and all, but the parent didn't say "Murdoch is the worst scum that has ever lived." He said, "Murdoch is scum." He didn't even say that Murdoch was the scummiest man in journalism.

For what it's worth, Hearst was just as or more scummy than Duranty, and he's a more apt comparison to Murdoch. Duranty was just a Soviet shill whereas Hearst paved the way for guys like Murdoch, started a war to sell newspapers, supported Hitler . . . need I go on?

Also, I would argue that NewsCorp's efforts to sell the war in Iraq are far more grievous than denying a famine. Even if Duranty would have reported accurately, those people still would have died. How many thousands died in Iraq because of the misinformation Murdoch spewed out to the public? If News Corp wouldn't have drummed up public support for the war it probably would never have occurred.

Regarding Duranty: No, I don't think anything could have been done about the famine. Diplomacy would do nothing to sway the Soviets. Why would it? And how would it do anything? A famine means there's not enough food. When there's not enough food there's just not enough food. The Soviets just didn't want their dirty laundry aired. It was 1933. No one was going to help the Soviets. It would just have been bad press - "look how bad communism is!"

Regardless, Hearst is still a much more appropriate analog to Murdoch.

Concerning Iraq: Saddam Hussein complied with every single U.S. request leading up to the war. When he submitted an inventory of his arsenal, Bush claimed that it was inaccurate because WMDs weren't on the list. Upon invasion that inventory looked to be pretty damn accurate.

What failed to sell peace was FUD. It was a textbook example. People were scared and uncertain and Fox News fueled that FUD as much as they could. Other media outlets failed by not standing up to all the nonsense, afraid they'd look unpatriotic, but at least they didn't actively pursue war.

The "serious thoughts" coming from the anti-war movement were drowned out by jingoism, racism, and fear. Right after 9/11 Bill Maher said, "we've been the cowards, launching cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that's cowardly." Not long after he show was canceled. The Bush administration, Murdoch, and others on the far right successful used a national hysteria to stifle individual liberties, empower their oligarchy, and effectively wag the dog. The fact that Americans were willing to put up with blatant censorship post-9/11 (banning songs on the radio!) shows just how irrational the general populace was between September 2001 up to around 2005. In your case, the irrationality seems to be a permanent state.

Am I missing something? This sounds like a good idea except for that Newscorp is involved. Besides that, what is wrong with this? Heck, I'm even wondering if anonymous, averaged data per school would be publicly available to see how schools are doing.

It just seems like this is the sort of thing that should have a glaring hole in it.

From experience made in the field of learning metrics, this usually produces teaching that increases test scores, but fails real the learning goals, i.e. producing insights and capabilities. This is well known. Looks like Gates failed to do any real research on the subject. Not a surprise and in line with his usual level of "insight". The only thing Gates can do well is amoral and borderline criminal business practices.

Are you saying that it fails on the measure of "how much insight and capability was produced"? What kind of measure is that, and how is it collected? Would you even call it a "metric" ?

That is the whole point. There are no useful known metrics and it looks like there cannot be. In such a situation, metrics always make matters worse. Even a randomized approach usually is better (i.e. produce the data in a random fashion without input from the object to be evaluated).

In many areas metrics just hurt and common sense is the only substitute. Of course that requires personal integrity as well and explains why Americans are so fond of metrics.

Most of us suspect what the future regarding personal privacy will be like. This tracking system, while at first it sounds like a very convenient way for teachers to easily access their students grades and know their weak and strong points, it is more of "another brick" in a structure that will gradually and - with the aid of other similar tracking systems and laws - eventually evolve in some Orwellian (big brother) system where all your personal history from your earliest years (your school grades, your sociality, your behavior, your political beliefs, your health records etc) will be in a single file for anyone (employers, insurance companies, the law etc) to access.

The obvious assumption when you're dealing with a known criminal organization is that they'll put all this effort into gathering information in order to sell it. The problem is, who will the customers be?

So... you package up a spam list of all the students who flunked financial literacy 101 and sell it to the car dealers, Realtors(tm), and mortgage brokers, "come and get em!". But they don't need the leads, because its all cross fertilized. The customers at the rent-a-center are the customers at the payday loan store are the customers at the subprime mortgage dealer are the customers at McDonalds are the customers at Walmart. They already know who these guys are.

OK so see I never took any automotive classes, so you assume you can screw me over at the stealership. What you don't know is I spent a summer helping a great-uncle rebuild a 1930's diesel tractor, helped weld a homemade lake-pier together which is still standing a quarter century later, etc... The idea that a "college bound" student like myself would attend a votech class was unthinkable in that era, and probably today... in fact all of our suburban students are supposed to go to college to make the bankers who provider the loans rich, so I don't think shop class attendance is going to be relevant or useful data. In a way, this is great, because it encourages people to teach themselves, not attend a class. I certainly did not learn how to replace brake rotors and pads in a classroom, that's for sure.

And the rest of the data? Donno. Maybe I'm low on caffeine but I donno who can profit off the knowledge that I aced everything in 2nd year chem aka introductory o-chem or that I didn't do so well in 9th grade history because I was bored to tears (well not literally, but darn close).

You collect data in order to determine the general trend. Nobody expects it to predict each and every thing you do exactly. Hence, even though you bucked the trend and learned something on your own, the data collector is still justified in making the prediction that you can only know what you were formally taught because in 99% of the cases this will be true. If you learn on your own, think for yourself, or otherwise do something you're not supposed to be doing, you're the exception and the companies who bu

Considering that Google thought I was an 18-24 year old male when I am well above that age range and most definitely a female, I'm not too worried about my demographics being out there for the world to see.

Considering that Google thought I was an 18-24 year old male when I am well above that age range and most definitely a female, I'm not too worried about my demographics being out there for the world to see.

It's my own fault for hanging around Slashdot, computer part stores, and video game websites all the time. Apparently things like Bath & Body Works and Lane Bryant don't cancel it out.

As if a (formerly) "18-24 year old male" like myself didn't shop constantly at BBW and LB (and other "girly" places) for girlfriend gifts. I probably blew more money at BBW than compusa back in the day, a rather substantial sum of money. Think about it, what is a teenage boys greatest motivator, and which store on average is more likely to get him some, autozone or BBW? Well thats enough GOOG apologetics for now, but I had to literally LOL at your claim that being a big BBW customer somehow proves the e

the data collector is still justified in making the prediction that you can only know what you were formally taught because in 99% of the cases this will be true

I would disagree in that everything that is not compulsory is forbidden and everything that is not forbidden is compulsory and mistargeting of ads is too likely.

In my example, all kids in my suburban school are supposed to go to college, therefore standards were pretty high, and we were almost all unable to attend shop class or at least strongly discouraged. When I signed up for a CAD intro class you'd think I grew a second head, the way my advisor/counselor reacted. Yet we wrenched on our cars in our spa

This man and his sprawling NewsCorp media empire have almost single-handedly ruined/corrupted objective journalism, and done so across multiple countries where NewsCorp is active. Nothing good can come from allowing Rupert Murdoch anywhere near schools and educational institutions. His signature reckless profiteering and lack of a conscience/values will likely corrupt the education process, too, not enhance it. I can't believe that Bill Gates is teaming up with Murdoch... I was under the impression that Bill had gone all "good guy philanthropist". Maybe I was wrong about that... But seriously, no venture owned by Rupert Murdoch should be allowed within a mile or so of a school, or of any other institution frequented by kids. This man will just try to spread his twisted, f^cked up neocon-ultra-jingo-conservative values to school children, given the chance. Don't do it, Bill. Whatever you are trying to accomplish, its not worth collaborating with this news-bully/snakeoil salesman/jingoist warmonger. Simply... don't... do it!

This man will just try to spread his twisted, f^cked up neocon-ultra-jingo-conservative values to school children, given the chance.

You apparently missed the part where it states this is about software to track student performance, not curriculum or instructional materials?But I can understand your concern - no schools should permit any deviation from "progressive [nationalreview.com]" messages and practices, or "progressive" programs like racist [nationalreview.com] curriculum [tucsoncitizen.com].

All the amazing tools and yet education level goes downhill. Why is that? Because the most important tool of education is metaphorical belt, ominously hanging on the metaphorical wall: if you are slackin', you' get the smackin'.

And the presence of father. Not the father "figure", but the real father (who does the metaphorical smacking).

If you have this, you don't need tools, just keep giving the homework and tests.

Give parents full autonomy of their kids. Sure few families will horrendously abuse their kids

Indeed. Violence stunts emotional growth and significantly increases the odds of latent psychopaths turning into active ones. This is a real problem and latent psychopaths are not that rare.

There are other forms of punishments, that together with rewards do work well. Of course they require a bit of insight into human nature. Seems that there are still primitives among us that do not have this insight.

I am fully aboard with jailing parents that use violence against their children. Nothing good comes from it

Physical punishment is simple. It happens, and you move on. There isn't continuing manipulative nastyness.

Physical punishment methods can be taught to nearly anybody. The critical idea is that the age of the child determines how long of a badness-to-punishment delay is allowable; a baby will fail to associate misbehavior with punishment if a tiny fraction of a second has passed. Also, avoid head impact.

Abuse is abuse. It can be psychological. Non-violent punishment can well be non-abusive. However physical violence is always abuse, just have a look into the literature. There is not even a discussion about it anymore, the verdict from science is crystal clear. "Violence begets violence" is an accurate description of human nature.

One of the problems is it that it is so bad that people that were affected themselves often glorify it in retrospect (to suppress the humiliation among other things) and then do it

One of the problems is it that it is so bad that people that were affected themselves often glorify it in retrospect (to suppress the humiliation among other things) and then do it on their own children. Stupid, but all too human.

No, that is stupid nonsense. There is absolutely nothing wrong with swatting a kid on the behind if he/she refuses to behave. There is nothing that pisses me off more than seeing somebody's stupid ass kid running around and being obnoxious in public with the parent refusing to do a

Learning is an individual process. Strong focus on "metrics" hinders progress and produces educated morons that can score high on tests but cannot do anything else well and do not have any real understanding on how things work. One reason is that the metrics typically used strongly promote learning facts without understanding them. The only place such people can perform well is on bureaucracies, i.e. in jobs where their main task is to decrease the performance of others. This technology allows even better implementation of that fallacy.

The only way to improve education is by improving the teachers. And, yes, that means firing bad and mediocre teachers and hiring good ones. Of course they will be more expensive and will need significant freedom to teach as they see fit, i.e. no parent influence. (A single moron parent can ruin a whole course if they are given influence....) Nothing of that sort seems likely to happen in a country so backwards that evolution is actually a disputed subject.

Agreed. The problem, to the extent that schools can fix it, is with teachers. Fix or fire the bad ones, improve and hire better ones. But somebody has to make an assessment of how effective the teachers are and there need to be tools for that.

Excessive focus on individual students, ironically, detracts from the ability of states, districts and administrations to run schools that do the best possible job for students.

And how do you identify bad teachers? Testing! Without testing, bad teachers hide in a cloud of bullshit.

Testing also serves as a less-biased way to grade the students. Teachers give better grades to attractive students, but the tests are blind to such things. Standard tests solve the grade inflation problem.

Why blame testing when the metrics promote facts without understanding? Teachers make that error too. Test designers don't always make that error. Either way, it's just a matter of quality.

Fail. Only good teachers can reliably identify good teachers. Testing just produces the same bad results, but with a longer impact time. I do understand that with the fundamentally broken legal system in the US, nobody is willing to go by opinions anymore for fear of being sued, but it really is the only way. Come to think of it, maybe this whole thing is just one more symptom of the decline of the US.

This is completely untrue. In fact, it worsens the problem. Standardized testing leads to teaching for the test. Teachers whose students do well on standardized tests focus superficially on the material that will be tested and gloss over the ancillary knowledge. Meanwhile teachers who focus on making sure the students really understand the subject matter will have kids who test less well. Plus standardized testing is re-evaluated year after year, and changed according to areas where the student body at

Have a look into the literature. I recommend "The Peter Principle" as a starting point. As to bureaucracy, yes, most bureaucrats suffer from a hugely inflated sense of self-value. Understandable, given that what they do is fundamentally evil. That they are a blight of society has been known very, very long. Just one citation: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" (Tacitus)

Wait, wait...isn't this the same guy who had another company that got into really deep hot water by hacking into people's phones and otherwise massively abusing their privacy? As in shut-the-company-down, pay-out-millions-to-the-victims, and some-just-got-arrested bad?

There IS a place for technology in schools, absolutely, and if you're at all familiar with schools the level of useless redundant work that goes on drives you nuts. Every year it ticks me off that I have to fill out 50 pages of nonsense information to tell the school what they already know. That said, you know who you don't give the job of modernizing it to? Someone with a track record of abusing the hell out of people's privacy.

or a penchant for misleading the public into believing falsehoods that promote his own personal desires. Even if they manage to collect accurate data I could definitely see Rupert manipulating the data or how it's interpreted to tell the public his own narrative of what needs to be changed in education.

There have been standardized tests in elementary through high schools for at least 30 years. Back then they were treated as they should be: a useful data point in determining how well students/teachers were performing, but not the end-all-be-all of the education system.

In the last 15 years, the number of standardized tests for kids, paperwork and mandatory training for teachers has increased so much that students are spending almost an additional month of the year away from the classroom because of it. Clas

There have been standardized tests in elementary through high schools for at least 30 years.

Ok, and now we have the means to have more fine-grained information.

Trying to judge a teacher solely on metrics is as stupid as trying to judge a programmer on lines-of-code per day

Depends on the metrics. Just like you CAN judge a programmer on some metrics. There are good metrics for judging teachers' performance. And, no, teacher's salary is not a good metric. It says nothing about how well they perform their job.

There is an effort to collapse or split education into haves and have-nots in the US. Its been really going on since Integration in the US. For decades before Integration, there were policies of "Dual Schools" in the US. That's happening again, and it's going to take legislators to stop it. The only way I can see it happening is massive over haul of the Public education system and forced closure of private education systems. There is a concerted effort by the conservative power elite in the USA to splinter and collapse universal schooling. The only way is to outlaw non-state sanctioned schooling so the wealthy are forced to participate in the public schooling system.

You'd need to do something about districts and remove local budgeting and control of schools. Not saying I agree with you, but if you don't do that, then all you're doing is shuffling names around without actually changing anything. If you keep districts at "neighborhood" or "city" size, then you just end up replicating have/have-not based on real estate value. Which leads inevitably to lower property taxes and higher state or federal taxes, more bookkeeping, middlemen, and corruption, etc. Because taxes never reduce, that means the locals will have lots of extra money floating around, which leads to more corruption. So overall, you'd theoretically get standardized education, but probably at a lower level due to higher corruption, and the upper half would still have everything from simply caring about their kids school all the way up to private schools, so as a society I don't think we'd win because the rich would remain better off, but the median would drop. The absolute bottom of the barrel would do better, but they're just going into the prison industrial complex anyway, so I see little point in wasting educational resources on them, just what we need, smarter criminals. So in summary, I disagree with your method and your goals, each for different reasons.

There is a concerted effort by the conservative power elite in the USA to splinter and collapse universal schooling

No its a 1% vs 99% thing, and the 1% use anti-leftie PR when talking to the righties, and anti-rightie PR when talking to the lefties, to get both sides to do their bidding. Looks like you fell for it hook line and sinker.

The "problems" in education, IMO, are multifaceted. Slapping performance metrics on top of the way things are now is only going to demoralize everyone further.

I find that teachers generally want to do well by their students. One problem is that some teachers have low or outdated content knowledge and,m accordingly, low or misplaced confidence. What is being done to "moderize" teachers? Or does that come after identifying which teachers are "bad" according to student performance on standardized tests?

Techniques to improve teaching/learning is a moving target. Teachers are desperate for that magic pill by which every student will finally understand. Like New Math. Like using computers. Like using educational games. Frankly, students will be different. Each method will probably speak to a different set of students. The "panacea" may be in maximizing the number of techniques that can be used for reaching the most students. However, we would have to ask whether the standardized student tests are set up to be able to capture the learning gained.

Also, teachers are not solely responsible for students' private lives. Maybe a student stressing over his parents' shit or being bullied. Some parents need to be involved in their kids' education and not stand by and "let" the school do the work. Learning takes some effort, so some students need to get the nonsense out of their heads enough to focus at least part of the time.

School districts need to stop being accountants for the sake of their own careers.

In US culture, everyone says they want a good educational system, yet it seems that things like money, sports, etc., receive a disproportionate amount of attention. And the role that religious nuttery and willful ignorance play serve to distract people from critical thinking skills.

I'm a teacher. My students have diverse socio-economic backgrounds. The students from "better" situations, on average, perform better. The reverse is usually true also. Of course, there are always outliers, but we're talking averages.

If this information was to be used to correct those out-of-school factors, that would be great. Unfortunately, they will most likely be used to punish under-performing teachers and districts.

Why do we trust Bill Gates' judgment on anything related to public education? This is a man who grew up the son of a wealthy politician; he has no firsthand experience with what happens in public school. He is also a college dropout. An admittedly smart, successful man, but his life experience is so far removed from those of us who grew up as public school "consumers" that, frankly, I find him to be among the LEAST qualified people to be making judgment calls regarding public education. Add Rupert Murdo

I had a coffee-out-the-nose moment when I saw "Rupert Murdoch" and "open software" in the same sentence. Murdoch doesn't believe anything positive comes from "open" anything. Perhaps, use of the service will be "open" to anyone with enough financial lubrication.